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Farmers in Poland blockaded roads and main border crossings with Ukraine on Friday in the beginning of a month-long sequence of countrywide protests. The farmers demand a cease to imports of agricultural merchandise from Ukraine and a halt to implementing EU inexperienced insurance policies — echoing calls for made at protests round Europe. They’ve additionally requested for extra money for livestock farming.
A number of different Polish politicians, together with Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz of the Polish Folks’s Occasion, additionally criticized Wojciechowski and known as for his resignation.
“There’s a man in Europe who united all European and Polish farmers in opposition to the reform he proposed. That is Janusz Wojciechowski. Resign!” Kosiniak-Kamysz stated.
Kaczyński spoke to Wojciechowski on Friday afternoon and requested him to resign, folks within the European Fee advised POLITICO, including that Wojciechowski was “significantly contemplating” doing so.
Nonetheless Wojciechowski later gave an interview on Polish TV at which he dismissed the calls to resign. “European commissioners don’t take directions from the capitals of member international locations,” he stated. Responding to Kaczyński, he stated that, whereas he revered the views of the PiS chief, he wouldn’t “act beneath strain.”
With solely months left in his mandate, Wojciechowski has lengthy been seen as a lame-duck commissioner after hitting the marketing campaign path in assist of the failed bid by PiS to win a 3rd time period in a basic election final fall. His repeated absences from Brussels led to criticism on the time that he was “quiet quitting.”
Wojciechowski on Thursday revealed an open letter on the X platform highlighting the actions he had taken to assist farmers in Poland, together with lobbying to curb imports of Ukrainian merchandise and rising funding for livestock farmers inside the final reform of the Widespread Agricultural Coverage.
This story has been up to date.
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